Virtus.pro’s Sneg1 outlines reasons for team disbandment

Team Virtus.pro’s disbandment was a shock to everyone that has closely followed the CIS Dota 2 scene, while the team has been without doubt underperforming in the past few months, everyone was looking forward to a possible reshuffle but not a total disbandment. Just a little later this week, Virtus.pro’s management director Anton “Sneg1”Cherepennikov outlines what he thinks are the problems in the CIS Dota 2 pro scene, and the possible reasons as to why they decided to drop their Dota 2 squad and its team managers.

We have many players who know how to play Dota, but there are too few players who know how to win Dota.

It wouldn’t have been as bad as it is now if we had some experienced leaders able to pull the young players together in a crisis situation and turn the tide in our favor.

Players have no understanding and responsibility. Here’s an example: when a kid is playing football, his parents are usually proud of him. There are a lot of major tournaments (like UEFA, FIFA, etc.) being broadcasted by TV and discussed literally everywhere. The kid understands that what he does is quite serious. Young Russian Dota 2 pros have never experienced such kind of feelings, and as such, they don’t understand the situation. People still think of them as some kind of “no-lifers”, their parents are usually rebuking them for playing Dota instead of “doing something serious”. As a result, your typical 18-year-old Dota 2 player doesn’t realize his responsibility before the fans. This problem is far from being solved in football, let alone Dota. As a result, young Dota players usually play without understanding their responsibility. They don’t care about the emotions of fans, they don’t care about the club’s efforts. They simply can’t understand that. It takes years and thousands of losses to fully understand your responsibility. The youngsters know nothing about it – and, as such, they don’t understand it. It could have been fixed if we had competent and experienced managers, but the sport is still very young and we don’t have such kind of managers.

Players don’t understand the difference between a pubstomper and a professional. They can spend tens of hours playing Dota, but their efficiency is close to zero while they think they’re doing their best. In reality, they’re just trying to justify their laziness. They don’t want to analyze the replays, improve their solo and team skills, search for new playstyles, etc. They just want to play Dota. If you try to analyze the replays with the team, they’ll become bored in 5 minutes. I’ve seen it a lot of times. They just want to continue playing.

As a consequence, we now have an army of pubsters. They know the game quite well, but they don’t know how to use their skills. You may play for tens of hours every day, but you’ll barely use 10% of your skills and understanding of game mechanics. As a result, you’ll lose to somebody who only play 3-4 hours a day but use 100% of his skills. It’s because they know how to use their skills. No need to point the finger at some foreign teams, like “y’know, they’re just playing for fun and they still win!”. They have time for playing for fun, but they are also constantly training. Our Polish CS:GO squad is a great example. The players have kids and other hobbies alongside CS:GO. But they are constantly training with maximum efficiency. They are actually thinkinginstead of simply pushing buttons.

Lack of understanding leads to inconsistent, unstable play. Sometimes our players just try to play as if they’re in a pub instead of a professional match. As such, they can’t keep the bar. Unfortunately, we won’t have any stability unless we’ll have a structural approach. Fixing it will be an interesting question, but we’ll be thinking this up.

I have a strategy of what to do with our Dota 2 squad, but I’m not ready to tell you anything until August. We need more time and information.